Commercial cleaning systems are used in various industries. For example, in the restaurant industry, warewashing systems are employed to rapidly wash large quantities of eating utensils, plates, pots, pans, glassware, etc. As another example, in the hotel industry clothes/linen washers are employed to rapidly wash large quantities of hotel linens, towels, clothing, and the like. In operation, commercial cleaning systems typically dispense one or more chemical products through a dispenser attached to the cleaning system. These commercial cleaning systems are typically called chemical usage systems due to the fact that these systems utilize chemicals to perform various types of tasks at various types of facilities. As such, the facilities where these systems are maintained are commonly referred to as chemical usage facilities.
A user of a commercial cleaning system may contract with a chemical vendor company to handle the replenishment of chemical products upon exhaustion. The vendor employs delivery personnel to deliver new chemical products to various geographically dispersed chemical usage facilities. For a number of reasons, determining when the systems have exhausted the chemical product has been difficult for the vendors. As such, vendors have had difficulty in optimally determining when and where to dispatch delivery personnel among its multiple geographically dispersed customers.
Traditionally, chemical vendors have not had sophisticated monitoring or communications systems for interacting with geographically-dispersed chemical usage facilities, and yet it is important that the vendors have advanced notice of imminent chemical product exhaustion to optimally route chemical delivery. Vendors typically require advance notice prior to chemical product exhaustion so that the dispatch personnel can schedule their delivery routes in such a way that the user receives a new chemical product without any downtime. If a cleaning system exhausts the chemical product without a refill available (i.e., no refill has been delivered prior to exhaustion), then the user may not be able to properly clean the linens, eating utensils, or other items, which may result in increased costs or reduced revenue for the user.
The amount of product that remains at a chemical usage facility depends on numerous factors, such as wash cycles per day, system operation/maintenance, type of chemical used, usage rates, and operator error. Indeed, it is often difficult to measure quantities of chemical product remaining, particularly if the chemical product is in solid form. For example, a solid block of chemical product that ratably dissolves on a per wash-cycle basis cannot be directly measured in terms of weight, mass, size, or otherwise, using conventional commercial cleaning systems.
It is with the foregoing considerations that embodiments of the present invention have been developed.